Please give a shout out to the developers who were online to deal with the minor inconveniences the hardcore raiding community experienced on Saturday. More than 10 guilds showed up to experience delays and issues related to being unable to start the Laurion's Song Tier 1 raids. I am glad we were still able to enjoy an activity that we have put so much time and effort into preparing for today. It could have easily been something that the developers could not have so quickly or easily resolved. I hope everyone had fun regardless of whatever the outcome was for the people who did show up, and that people trying the raids in the coming days and weeks experience no more issues. Honestly the only words that make sense are Thank You EverQuest, Daybreak and Darkpaw teams. All of your efforts are appreciated. Please continue to do a thankless job and provide these kinds of top tier services to people who probably don't deserve them.
It's nice that some issues with raids got resolved ... on a Saturday. But it would seem like the issues faced (I heard it was a raid not starting and one ending after the first phase ... might be wrong) should have been avoided in the first place and would have been with any simple QA procedures in place, something that we don't seem to have given the type of problems on Live we face. I am reluctant to thank people for not doing their jobs in the first place. Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't the folks who are raiding actually paying for the game atm (accounts and expansions)? Aren't the developers getting paid salaries? I think you can be civil. I also think you can demand better service for your money.
Ya it's nice and all but at this point it should be expected that something goes wrong with every launch. If they don't want to work on a Saturday to fix those issues don't schedule a release on a Saturday.
It is nice to have people that work at Darkpaw that still care enough to fix these issues on their own time. But, it is also frustrating as a player to witness the same "Mistakes" year after year that ruin the handful of things that people still bother to pay and log into EQ for. How does the Mischief raid work for the majority of beta then suddenly break on live in a catastrophic way. Why is there nobody on the team that can take 5minutes to double check these things BEFORE these things ruin the gaming experience for players. Around 10 guilds logged in on a saturday afternoon to partake in the launch and the tiniest bit of competitiveness(lol) EQ has to offer only for it to be squandered. Personally im disappointed in Darkpaw and the development of EQ, but that has become the norm for me. Personally i think top tier services would be things working the first time with minimal mistakes but maybe I fall into the group of players that dont deserve a little bit of Quality Assurance.
Derresh described what I'm thinking. While I'm grateful that this was fixed on Saturday when we raided, I think daybreak should make sure t1, t2 and t3 raids will start without issues. Most guilds spend a lot of time in beta with these events preparing for ... well, let's call it a race , and not finding raid instances functioning as they should on release day is troubling. Let's se how February launch goes.
I haven't decided if this is a troll post yet or not. Everquest is a service that is provided for a fee to the consumer. Raids launch on Saturdays. The expectation is that they launch in the working order that they were in when "design lock" went in on beta, but that has been proven to not be the case year over year. I don't think as a customer base we are asking for too much to have support available on the weekends (that the tiers launch on). We all joked that perhaps DPG somehow never fixed the leap year bug of ToV era. (Now is the time to make sure that is fixed btw). [Sat Jan 06 12:14:51 2024] Bidils the Quickhand says, 'It is not yet time for you to visit this heroic event.' [Sat Jan 06 12:14:56 2024] Bidils the Quickhand says, 'Excellent! Good choice. Just don't be too shocked by my brilliance.' Love the irony in Bidils response phrase. [Sat Jan 06 12:15:29 2024] LOADING, PLEASE WAIT... [Sat Jan 06 12:16:27 2024] You have entered The Plane of Mischief: Bidils the Quickhand. No NPCs. [Sat Jan 06 12:18:06 2024] LOADING, PLEASE WAIT... [Sat Jan 06 12:18:21 2024] You have entered Laurion Inn. [Sat Jan 06 12:19:20 2024] LOADING, PLEASE WAIT... [Sat Jan 06 12:19:49 2024] You have entered Elddar Forest: The Return of Kanghammer. [Sat Jan 06 12:27:53 2024] LOADING, PLEASE WAIT... [Sat Jan 06 12:30:31 2024] You have entered Laurion Inn. This zone time took so long it looked to the raid like several people went LD as it dropped them from the raid and required them to be re-invited, those people were also bugged as showing still in the raid, needing to be group invited back. [Sat Jan 06 12:40:58 2024] LOADING, PLEASE WAIT... [Sat Jan 06 12:41:36 2024] You have entered The Plane of Mischief: Bidils the Quickhand. Finally a DZ that has a population to slaughter. So....good job at marginal increases in zone times on a high pop server? Things that still need work: QA: Test events on your own after beta, like on the TEST server, to ensure they will unlock properly. Not 15 minutes late. Not without NPCs in the DZs. Not without loot lockouts. There should be a checklist that is run through for each event prior to launch. Communicate with the EQ community. There was no announcement of Bidils issues in the moment. How were we supposed to know when the event was hotfixed? Guesswork or pester a dev or CRC to pester a dev? Or ignore the feedback. Your choice I suppose.
